The Flea Palace Part 8

'Like you've got a giant head!'

Hadji Hadji intervened: 'Don't talk like that with your older brother. Neither the genies nor Allah will like those who don't respect their elders.'

The five and a half year old tilted her head, tugging her pinky-ginger pleated skirt. Utterly immobile for a while, from the corner of her eye she then looked at her older brother only to see the other pouting at her. Without a sound she slid closer to her grandfather.

'The genies have a sultan. They call him Beelzebub. Never do they dare to disobey his orders, but there are times when they get involved in all sorts of intrigues without his knowledge. The genie gang comes in all types. The genies are like humans, some are good, some wicked. Some are devout, some infidels. There are three types of genies: firstly, there are some in the form of snakes or bugs, secondly are those in the shape of wind or water and last but not least, there are those who take the form of humans. It is this last group that is the most menacing of all! You can never tell if they are really humans or genies. They throw weddings that last until dawn, eating, drinking and dancing to the rhythm of drums and zurnas. If you ever happen upon a genie wedding late at night, you should instantly turn your head. Don't ever try to sneak a look! When you get up to go to the bathroom at night, don't ever take even one step without uttering Allah's name aloud! Particular attention needs to be paid to thresholds because that's where the genies like to linger. The only way to eschew the genies is to not do anything without uttering Allah's name. If you forget to do so, the genies will surely reach you and meddle with your life!' repined Hadji Hadji, leaning his aching back on one of the pillows piled up on the couch to build an Osman afterward. The little girl next to him cowered and moved in tandem, as if glued to the old man.

'The most horrible one is the "Crimson Broad". When she haunts a woman who has just given birth, she'll never let go of her prey. All night long, she mounts the new mother's chest as if riding a horse. Only at dawn does she leave the poor thing drenched in sweat and fear, but the next night, she's back there again, this time attacking the cradle, throwing the baby up in the air like a soccer ball.'

'Oh I remember her,' the seven and a half year old blurted out, eyeing his siblings, 'She came to their birth!'

'Of course, she would! If, instead of having the birth her way, your mother had called for your deceased grandmother, there would be no quandaries. Your grandma, peace be upon her, would certainly have managed to get rid of the "Crimson Broad", but the poor soul pa.s.sed away without seeing her grandchildren.'

Deeply vexed by their grandfather's response, the five and a half year old and the six and a half year old grovelled at once. While the little girl's lower lip drooped down, the boy had started to suck his thumb which was already thinned out from constant sucking.

'And you better be cautious about the "Black Congolos" too, the most merciless of them all... She disguises herself as an aged woman, wandering on the streets, waiting for her prey at street corners. She asks questions to the pa.s.sers-by: "Where are you coming from?" and "Where are you going to?" she inquires. "Which family do you descend from?" she further asks. If you stumble upon "Black Congolos", you have no other choice than to respond to her questions by using the word "black" each time. Say, for instance, "I am from the black ones" or "I come from the black town". Only then will she leave you in peace. Every so often she asks for an address. If you don't know the address, I pity you. She takes out her cane, whacks you on the head and beats you so bad that...'

His words were ripped apart by the ringing of the phone. The seven and a half year old reached for the receiver with no hurry. Yes, they had finished their breakfasts. No, they were not being naughty. Yes, they were watching television. No, grandpa was not telling tales. No, they were not turning the gas on. No, they were not messing up the house. No, they did not hang off the balcony. No, they did not play with fire. No, they did not go into the bedroom. Really, grandpa was not telling a tale.

However, that day his mother must have been in need of confirmation for she insisted: 'If your grandpa is telling tales simply say, "The weather is cold," and I'll understand.'

The seven and a half year old hesitated for a moment. A nocturnal gleam slid from his moss green eyes. There followed a p.r.i.c.kly silence. When the gleam had disappeared, he had already changed his mind. Without feeling the need to lower his voice or take his eyes off his grandfather, he answered in an indifferent voice: 'No, mom, the weather is not cold. However, grandpa does keep telling us creepy stories.'

Flat Number 7: Me.

'You seem to be in good spirits today, Professor,' Ece sitting at the front row twittered in the most glib voice she could manage. She was dressed in pitch black from top to toe, as usual: black lipstick, black nail polish, black eyes made to stand out with black eye pencil. I took out the copy of 'Sickness Unto Death' from my briefcase and placed it on her desk.

'I have indeed come to cla.s.s in good spirits, but whether I'll still be in this state when we are done depends on you. Let's see if the articles have been read,' I said, proceeding with a typical introduction to a typical Thursday lecture.

'We have read from, "In Praise of Folly", by Erasmus. The part where he mentions Fortuna we compared to Machiavelli's Fortuna. Entirely read, a.n.a.lyzed and memorized!' Ece spoke up.

'Fine, then can somebody please tell me what sort of a thing this Fortuna is?' I asked, taking pains to address not Ece but the whole cla.s.s.

'For sure, a female,' Ece raised an answer, apparently pleased with trampling whatever prudence I maintain. 'In both Machiavelli and Erasmus, Fortuna is personified and feminized and because she's a female, it's no big surprise that they don't find her reliable. The church fathers shared the same opinion and we Turks are no different. We say destiny is either blind or a s.l.u.t. If blind, she can't see what she distributes to whom, so can't be expected to be fair. If a s.l.u.t, she'll have nothing to do with fairness anyhow. At times there's a wheel in her hand. At other times she herself forms a wheel by swirling her skirts. Hence the expression 'Wheel of Fortune'! There is no way of knowing when or where she'll stop, bringing who-knows-what to whom. According to Machiavelli, Fortuna controls half of our lives and there's nothing we can do about that part. However, it is possible, even if only partially, to make Fortuna obey our demands. Since each and every one of the fountainheads of political philosophy happen to be male, it looks like in the persona of Fortuna they are unanimously searching for ways with which to bring women to their knees.'

'Huh? So this Fortuna you are talking about is our good old Kader?' Cem blurted out, apparently having not the slightest problem in revealing his ignorance on the a.s.signed articles.

In the ensuing fifteen minutes or so, constantly interrupting each other's sentences, they talked about our good old Kader.

'I think it's really cheap to criticize Machiavelli from the standpoint of contemporary feminist paradigms,' said the curly-haired girl with the gla.s.ses whose name always escaped me, and who I knew did not like Ece one wee bit but for some reason always sat behind her. 'The issue is, do you think you're living a life that's been drawn up for you ahead of time? Has your life been determined a priori? That is the question we need to ask. In struggling against Kader, the man's clearly coming to terms with religion. Neither Enlightenment nor progress would've been possible without breaking away from Fortuna, or bringing her to her knees, if you will.'

Ece stretched tautly as she crossed her legs. She does this repeatedly, knowing too well the beauty of her legs. So far, I have not seen any colleague suffer serious academic damage for getting mixed up in some sort of a love affair with a student. If someone is hunted down for this reason, it is because he would have been hunted down in any case. At any rate, I do not reciprocate Ece's interest in me. Not because I am worried it would reach my colleagues' ears. What really matters is not what the academics pretend not to know, but what the students pretend to know, for female students always talk. They can never hold their tongues. Each one has a close friend to confide in, each confidant another one of her own, and so it goes. Complete disenchantment! All of a sudden you are not the 'esteemed, unknown' professor you once were, always watched by prying eyes from a distance, but an ordinary mortal whose weaknesses, lunacies, baloneys and fixations are paraded in front of all. To be with a young girl could indeed provide a pleasant boost to self-esteem for middle-aged men, but that comes at a cost: it is a shaky status bound to shatter any time. It might easily capsize at the very first flick. Then, all the letters you have written, the confessions you have made and the secrets you let slip will altogether vex you. Your s.e.xual performance will be the talk of town and before you it, know you'll have become the b.u.t.t of all jokes. It is not worth it. I never considered any female student of mine to be worth all this. Not even Ece.

'Why don't we just simply confess that we can't control our lives? I may be held responsible for what I do but I can't be blamed for what I spark off,' Ece said, watching my every move all the while. 'I'm from birth the daughter of this or that person. I can choose neither my father nor my nation and certainly not my religion or language. If they'd asked my opinion, I'd have preferred to have been born in another environment; if refused the alternative, I'd rather not have been born at all. It's that simple. If you had been born somewhere else, rather than a scarf on your head you would have had a cross on your neck,' she poured out. Though she had turned back, it was not clear as to which one of the three headscarfed girls she had addressed her words.

'I too believe in destiny', answered Seda, always sitting in the middle of the always together headscarfed threesome.

'But that's not at all what I'm talking about,' grumbled Ece the blabbermouth. 'You believe in a divine justice. Things are what they are at the moment but you think some day everyone will be held accountable for what they did in life. The debauched will be punished in h.e.l.l, the gullible rewarded in heaven and so on. You retain a notion of justice in your mind. Otherwise your faith will smash to smithereens. Fortuna is exactly the opposite. She has nothing to do with the other world, so solidly mundane!'

'Frankly guys, I have a hard time understanding why you got so hooked up on this Fortuna,' interjected Cem, bringing his chair closer to the wall as if getting ready to flee through the window. 'The real question is not Fortuna or anything similar but concerns the very difference between a line and a circle. If you believe this life you are living is a line, you might just as well presume you'll triumph over the past, reach the future. However, if it is a circle which your life resembles, rest a.s.sured that there is no such thing as "progress". Are you at peace with recurrence or not? That's the fundamental issue. A man like Machiavelli can't be at peace with recurrence because that requires acceptance of the sullen fact that the life you live now, you'll live again and again, that tomorrow won't be any different than today exactly the same question as Nietzsche asked of Rousseau. When you're alone, at the loneliest hour of your life, say, if all of a sudden a teensy weensy devil descends all the way from h.e.l.l and exclaims, "Have no fear, I guarantee you, there is no such thing as death, if anything, there is only recurrence. Every single thing you've lived until this very moment, you'll live all over again. Then again and again. Forever..." How would you feel then? How many of us can tolerate living our lives over and over again? Those who can put up with Fortuna's whims will never go mad. It's that simple. To endure life, a man like Machiavelli has to cut the circle somewhere and transform it into a line. Only then can the idea of progress surface, and along with it, the notion of individualism.'

I looked at my watch; five minutes left to the end of the second hour. 'Once again you manage to surprise me with your ability to deviate from the subject matter,' I muttered as I took out my pack of cigarettes, indicating a break. 'Next week you'll have completed all the readings and we'll only talk about what you've read. No one will blabber without proof.'

During the third hour, I lectured and they listened without a comment. While everyone else took notes, Cem looked out the window and Ece munched half a pack of bitter chocolate. A speck of chocolate, almost black, stuck there on the side of her lip like a naughty mole.

Flat Number 5: The Daughter-in-Law and Her Children.

'Mom, why are you taking us with you?' whined the five and a half year old.

'Come on, isn't this great? Don't you want to see where your mother works?' the Daughter-in-Law said, as she held more tightly onto the hands of the two children forcing them to adjust to the speed of her footsteps. How on earth she was going to restrain the kids at the box office all day long she hadn't quite yet worked out, besides which she was afraid of angering her boss, but she was too high-strung to think rationally after the fight with her father-in-law. As they neared the end of Cabal Street, she slowed down and looked back over her shoulder. The seven and a half year old was two metres behind them. Despite the inquisitive looks of some pa.s.sers-by, he seemed remarkably happy now that he had stepped outside Bonbon Palace after two years.

Soon the lump of anguish the Daughter-in-Law was used to savouring whenever she watched her older son chased away the wisps of worries pullulating from her mind. Though she knew too well that her oldest child would be the shortest to live with her, among all her children it was he that she was most deeply attached to. Children born with a lethal illness, unlike their peers and siblings, belong only to their mothers and always stay as such.

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.

Flat Number 7: Me.

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 rak. Only after the third double, did the c.u.n.t 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 att.i.tude... She had always been like this. The high school friendship of Ayshin and Ethel was, to all intents and purposes, thesis-ant.i.thesis rapport, and this vivacious essence revealed itself when I came between them. I doubt Ethel's love for soccer would have reached such sky-sc.r.a.ping 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 gla.s.s. Then, slowly and a.s.suredly, 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 b.u.t.tons 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 b.u.t.ton was undone. I was just about to cover with my jacket what her hand was up to when a hoa.r.s.e 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 c.u.n.t'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 s.c.r.e.w.i.n.g 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 h.o.m.os.e.xual, 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 G.o.dknowswhere, 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 b.u.t.tons 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 d.a.m.n 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 c.u.n.t 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.

'UNDER THIS WALL LIES A HOLY SAINT.

DO NOT DUMPYOUR GARBAGE HERE!'

'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 c.u.n.t 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 pa.s.sed 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 pa.s.sed 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?'

Flat Number 1: Meryem.

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 pa.s.sengers 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 pa.s.sengers 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 G.o.d on the intercession express. Unlike the daytime pa.s.sengers, 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.

Being a pa.s.senger of the earliest train, Meryem's faith was not only far less calculated than that of others but also less 'by the book'. It's hard to tell, if she would have done the same thing had she not been pregnant at the time when the writing appeared on the wall. Since pregnancy rendered her a bit bizarre, early that morning she went out into the garden with an empty jar in hand to collect from the soil of the nameless saint. Not that she really believed there was a genuine saint buried in the garden, but as that university professor had stated, given the fact that under all these Istanbul sidewalks rested ancient graves, one could not predict what would emerge from where. If the writing turned out to be bogus, she would be left with just a jarful of soil, that was all. However, if there really was a saint under the rose acacia in the garden of Bonbon Palace, then there was only one request she would like to make to him: to infuse Muhammet with courage, even if it were only a morsel.

Flat Number 2: Sidar and Gaba.

When the doorbell rang, Sidar scurried to answer it, hoping that Muhammet had once again brought them something to eat. However, when he opened the door, there in front of him stood not the little emissary of Madam Auntie but the nutty girl with the coppery hair. Either the girl had drastically changed since they had last seen one another or Sidar's memory of her had gone awry, but her eyes were just like he remembered, so beautifully solemn. She barged in with a bewildering smile and without waiting to be invited. As if tired she tottered unsteadily towards the couch and asked her host, still standing fixed on the spot, for something to drink. Sidar shuffled to the kitchen scratching his head. He opened up the only bag of coffee in the cupboard and poured the water heated up with the only pot in the house into the only mug on the shelf.

'Aren't you going to have one too?'

'Later,' Sidar shrugged. 'There is only one mug in the house anyhow.'

Three hazelnut wafers emerged from the girl's backpack, immediately arousing Gaba's interest. Still, however, he refused to move an inch.

'What was the dog's name?'

'Gaba,' Sidar grumbled, suspicious of having already told her this in their previous meeting.

'What does it mean?'

'Gaba is the abbreviation for gamma-amino-butiric acid which is an inhibitor nerve transmitter, something to do with the anxiety centre of the brain. Anti-convulsants, anti-anxiety pills and of course alcohol slows the Gaba receptor down. Consequently, you feel less anxious.'

'Cool! So you can speak German like your mother tongue, right? How long did you stay abroad?' the girl enthused before lying back on the couch. Upon seeing the ceiling, she fluttered her eyelashes in astonishment; then not knowing what to say, she fluttered her eyelashes some more.

'French,' Sidar corrected her tensely. Apparently the girl did not remember a word he had told her before. If she didn't care for the answers why on earth did she ask these questions? Besides she looked too sleepy to grasp a word. Her eyes were on the verge of closing while listening to the second, at most the third response. For what reason did she pose one question after another when it was all too obvious that the answers would remain incomplete, and that even if she learned the most that she could in the least time possible, she would have only attained straggly parts and smoggy pieces, not even the dimmest silhouette of the entirety of his life. The simple desire to get to know a person is a hollow pledge and a life-size burden! It requires that a person listen and observe, poke and sense, unwrap and ama.s.s for nights, weeks, years; to be able to peel off scabs and endure seeing the blood ooze from underneath. If a person is unable to put up with all this, it is much better, and certainly more honest, to throw in the towel straight off.

Not that I am a hitherto unappreciated treasure, locked in a chest awaiting exposure to sunlight. The answers to all the questions you ask about me are more or less already hidden inside you. I do not want you to desire to discover me or to even think you can do so. We do not have to know one another when we know so little of ourselves. Collecting information about others is like gathering food from garbage. What's the use of rotting the supplies in our brains if we are not to savour them in time?

A clipped snore interrupted the course of Sidar's thoughts. The girl had fallen asleep with her mouth agape. Taking a last puff from the cigarette he had rolled up at noon, Sidar curved up next to his guest. Watching them fretfully from where he had crouched down Gaba must have been finally convinced that n.o.body was out to get him for he hobbled closer. In a single breath, he wolfed down the hazelnut wafers, then, still licking away, he too came and curled up on the couch. As the headlights of the cars outside penetrated the pet.i.te windows spurring shadows on the wall, all three of them drifted off into three separate dreams.

Flat Number 8: The Blue Mistress and Me.

Tired of criss-crossing a path between the kitchen and the living room, the Blue Mistress threw a last look at the table. Everything seemed ready. She lit the lily-shaped candle floating in the water-filled gla.s.s bowl and placed blue napkins next to the blue plates. They had agreed to meet at seven. The doorbell rang at ten to seven.

'Welcome,' she chirped. Though she was already wearing high heels, she instinctively felt the need to rise up on her toes. 'Do you always arrive early like this?'

'I tried hard not to, but it turns out that it takes three and a half steps to get from my flat to yours,' I said smiling.

'Of course, your legs are so long,' she cackled, blushing at the end of her sentence, as if she had made an erotic remark.

We stood up by the entrance in a daze germane to people who, after long desiring each other, come to a sudden halt the moment they notice how close they actually are to obtaining what they have so badly craved. Though the intensity and frequency of our acquaintance had been limited to running into each other now and then, and chatting about this and that, I had long been aware of how deeply attracted she was to me. Hers is a face that cannot mask secrets. Still however, I hadn't been expecting this 'thing' between us to run its course so speedily, so effortlessly...