The Gaze (33 page)

So, in the end I became what I’d always wanted to be. I am a floating balloon. And like every floating balloon, I’m floating in the eyes of a lonely-child. My celestial passage will only last for the blink of an eye. And like every floating balloon, I can be considered a miracle. Because I swallowed so much gas without stopping and because I can remain light as long as I’m in the air. On top of this, if I wanted I could eat even more and expand even more, but not become the slightest bit heavier, and still be able to glide through the sky.

It’s so nice to fly… It’s so nice to be in the dome of the sky, lighter than a feather, more vagrant than a kite, more playful than steam, more carefree than a snowflake. My intention is to climb higher and higher. My intention is to climb miles and miles into the grey sky, and, touching the sun’s shadow, sit cross-legged on top of the clouds, watching the world. Because I want to know, can you see everything that’s going on down there when you look from up here? I’m curious about whether the hidden secrets of back gardens, the sins that are committed, the unfinished games, are recorded line-by-line, word by word. I want to know, does humanity has any privacy at all? Even if it’s only once in a while, I want to know if there’s a moment of the night when we can flee from sight, be free from being seen, some dark point, a small gap, invisible rip, tiny crack, minor leak…that is, as if a flea had bitten, a tick had fastened itself, a caterpillar had gnawed, a leech had sucked, a moth had eaten, one of the three apples that fell from the sky had worms, I want to know if there’s even the smallest bit of privacy in this world.

There’s not much further to go. The clouds are near. When I’ve climbed a bit more, my head will touch the clouds. Then I’ll climb a bit more, and then, finally, at long last, I’ll learn the answer about which I’ve been curious. Soon I’ll see the truth, and soon the truth will be seen.

Suddenly, I’m staring into a pair of bulging eyes. They’re looking at me with curiosity. They’re trying to understand what I am, what I’m seeking here, and why I’m so strange. They’re judging me. They know I don’t belong here. I’m a stranger in this stratum. This is the picture frame in which I least belong; it too is aware of this. The bulging eyes belong to a bird of prey. If I’d seen it at another time, that is, if I’d seen it when I was looking from below, I might have found it beautiful; but now, meeting it here, it looks terribly ugly. I wait for it to pass me and move on, but it continues to follow me. It keeps making sporadic squawking sounds. The sound is unpleasant and frightening. And suddenly, I don’t know why, it begins to attack. Its pointed beak, its beak the colour of raw meat, its beak punctures me.

I’m a floating balloon. I’m deflating now. As I rise I’m losing air. I’m letting out the air that I took in to give back the air I had dispersed. I’m buzzing like a confused fly, zipping from here to there through the air. If there’s a lonely-child watching from below at this moment, she’ll know that I’m about to disappear from sight. But anyway, she’s watched for long enough. Anyway I don’t like to be seen too much. Because life is private. And like everything private, it sometimes has to be able to remain far from the eye, from eyes.

I’m not going to be able to stand it any longer. I’m exploding.

I’m exploding. I’m not going to be able to stand it any longer.

‘Enough! Since we started out you’ve been counting onetwothreeonetwothree… What is this? It’s making me ill. Isn’t there anything after these numbers? Look, if you’re going to count honestly, all right, then count. But if you’re going to keep getting stuck like that, then be quiet. Be quiet!’

A deep silence fills the minibus. Everyone has stopped, and is looking at me in surprise. Nobody moves, not even to blink. Suddenly everything freezes. Everything, even the eyes as they turn to look at me. I feel myself going red. I’m sweating. The driver’s eyes are looking at me through the rear-view mirror. The young man sitting in the front street, who had turned completely around and was looking at me with his arms folded and his face contorted into an exaggerated expression of amazement, has stayed that way. I imagine they’re waiting for me to explain why I suddenly started shouting that way. I can’t see the faces of the people sitting in the back seats, but I can feel their eyes on me. The two housewives, the well-dressed estate agent and the man next to the window who was clearly on his way to an important meeting are all watching me intently. I don’t move my head at all in order not to make eye contact with the schoolgirl and especially the child’s mother. But I can still see from the corners of my eyes that they’re looking at me.

A red light is burning in the single eye of the silken-haired doll hanging from the rear-view mirror. It seemed that the driver had stepped on the breaks the moment I shouted. The red light in the doll’s eye is now looking at me like everyone and everything else on the minibus. Beads of sweat are collecting on my forehead. I’m suffocating. But this terror won’t last much longer. The driver is the first to pull himself together. As he starts the minibus, he continues watching me through the rear-view mirror. We get under way.

The next person to pull himself together is the young man sitting in the front seat. He decides not to wait for my explanation, and turns to face forward. Judging from the way they whisper among themselves, it seems that the housewives have recovered from their initial surprise. Meanwhile. The woman next to me has started wriggling restlessly. As for the child…the bug-eyed child had embraced her mother in fear the moment I started shouting, and remained with her face buried under her mother’s coat. Now, she too is slowly lifting her head.

She lifts her head, looks at me, makes a distressed sound, breathes in, then, pouting, makes an even more distressed sound, then suddenly starts wailing. At the same moment, the mother and all of the passengers on the minibus jump to console the child. Everyone, talking at once, is uttering phrases like ‘Don’t cry my dear, there’s nothing to cry about, it’s all over.’ At one point the driver, turning sideways and holding the steering wheel with one hand, makes funny faces to try to make the child laugh. When he sees that this is not going to work, he faces forward again, and gives me dirty looks through the rear-view mirror. As for me, all I did was sit there and sweat.

Knowing that everyone in the minibus was on her side, the bug-eyed child cries even more. She’s crying and screaming and kicking up a fuss. As she cries, my brain is throbbing and my limbs are shaking from nerves. I said it before, being fat makes me an irritable person.

I get off at the next stop.

I start walking. I overcome my body’s objections, and start trudging slowly up the hill. The sky has grown quite dark, and it’s very late. I don’t know how long I was on the minibus. But I don’t care about time any more. I’m cold. It’s cold enough to snow tonight. As I approach home, I sense that something strange is going on. It’s as if…there’s too much activity. Streets that are usually deserted at this hour are lively. A little further along, a group of people has gathered. The lights of all the houses overlooking the street are burning, and curtains are wide open. Neighbours have crowded onto balconies and are hanging out of the windows. As I approach the place where people have gathered, high-pitched sounds reach my ears. Some people run past me, heading in that direction. It’s clear that whatever is being shown there, some people don’t want to miss the show.

This is a world of spectacles.

About seeing and being seen.

A little later, when I’m able to find a place in the curious crowd, I can see what everyone else sees. In the middle of the street, under a street lamp, a woman in her fifties, in a flannel night-gown and slippers with pom-poms, is shouting and screaming as she does a belly dance. A group of people in night-gowns and pyjamas, who from the state they’re in are clearly the woman’s relatives, are trying to get her back in the house by pulling at her and begging her. ‘Get her in the house and she can shout as much as she likes. Get her in the house so the neighbours won’t see. It doesn’t matter if other people hear her, it’s enough that they don’t see.’

The family is trying to pull the woman away from the crowd’s gaze. The crowd are holding their breath, watching carefully, the more they see, the better.

I hold my breath, and watch very carefully.

Not too much to ask, is it? It was in 1935 when Allen Lane, Managing Director of Bodley Head Publishers, stood on a platform at Exeter railway station looking for something good to read on his journey back to London. His choice was limited to popular magazines and poor-quality paperbacks – the same choice faced every day by the vast majority of readers, few of whom could afford hardbacks. Lane’s disappointment and subsequent anger at the range of books generally available led him to found a company – and change the world.

We believed in the existence in this country of a vast reading public for intelligent books at a low price, and staked everything on it’
Sir Allen Lane, 1902–1970, founder of Penguin Books

The quality paperback had arrived – and not just in bookshops. Lane was adamant that his Penguins should appear in chain stores and tobacconists, and should cost no more than a packet of cigarettes.

Reading habits (and cigarette prices) have changed since 1935, but Penguin still believes in publishing the best books for everybody to enjoy.We still believe that good design costs no more than bad design, and we still believe that quality books published passionately and responsibly make the world a better place.

So wherever you see the little bird – whether it’s on a piece of prize-winning literary fiction or a celebrity autobiography, political tour de force or historical masterpiece, a serial-killer thriller, reference book, world classic or a piece of pure escapism – you can bet that it represents the very best that the genre has to offer.

www.penguin.co.uk

Join the conversation:

Twitter
                  
Facebook

PENGUIN BOOKS

Published by the Penguin Group

Penguin Books Ltd, 80 Strand, London
WC2R 0RL
, England

Penguin Group (USA) Inc., 375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014, USA

Penguin Group (Canada), 90 Eglinton Avenue East, Suite 700, Toronto, Ontario, Canada
M4P 2Y3
(a division of Pearson Penguin Canada Inc.)

Penguin Ireland, 25 St Stephen’s Green, Dublin 2, Ireland
(a division of Penguin Books Ltd)

Penguin Group (Australia), 250 Camberwell Road, Camberwell, Victoria 3124, Australia
(a division of Pearson Australia Group Pty Ltd)

Penguin Books India Pvt Ltd, 11 Community Centre, Panchsheel Park, New Delhi – 110 017, India

Penguin Group (NZ), 67 Apollo Drive, Rosedale, North Shore 0632, New Zealand
(a division of Pearson New Zealand Ltd)

Penguin Books (South Africa) (Pty) Ltd, 24 Sturdee Avenue, Rosebank, Johannesburg 2196, South Africa

Penguin Books Ltd, Registered Offices: 80 Strand, London
WC2R 0RL
, England

www.penguin.com

First published in Turkey as
Mahrem
by Metis Yayinlari in 1999

First published in Great Britain and in the USA by Marian Boyars Publishers Ltd 2006

Published in Penguin Books 2010

Copyright © Elif Shafak, 1999, 2006

This translation copyright © from the Turkish by Brendan Freely, 2006

All rights reserved

The moral right of the author and of the translator has been asserted

Except in the United States of America, this book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, re-sold, hired out, or otherwise circulated without the publisher’s prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser

ISBN: 978-0-14-196138-5